All That Glitters is Gold
by arkninja
Summary: Ki glows blue. Ranma using Ki glows blue. Dropped into a world similar but fundamentally different from home Ranma is mistaken for something else that, ironically enough, glows blue.  A/U
1. Chapter 1

With little else to do one Ranma Saotome steeled his nerves as he balanced herself atop a pointed rock beneath a torrential waterfall. Now twenty-three and considerably more in-control of both his Ki and emotions Ranma concentrated on sustaining the set of vacuum blades that split the crushing wall of water above his head. As easy as this sounds the amount of concentration it took to hold the blades in position and the constant energy and concentration necessary were astronomically high. Such is the life of a martial artist, or so he thought as he nudged a blade out wider to keep the mist far enough away from activating his curse.

With almost eight years with his wonderful condition of being one of two aqua-transsexuals on the planet Ranma was getting used to the idea that there really was no cure. Not that he would admit it to anyone but it had almost become an essential part of being 'himself'. Without the curse Ranma would cease to be Ranma. He would often justify it away with something combat related such as "I would lose the adaptability of having a form specialized for speed!" or "the psychological power a beautiful woman has over a male opponent is not to be underestimated!" etc etc etc. Deep down Ranma knew that the curse had become an integral part of his being and the near perfect balance of male and female Ki in his system reflected this mindset.

Ironically enough it was this acceptance of what he, and sometimes she, was was what had set him out into the wilds for a second time. After three years of constant, if sometimes entertaining, chaotic abuse Ranma had had enough. The failure of a wedding had simply pushed a little too hard and with the loss of, what at the time, had been a cure, Ranma left to do some serious soul searching in the form of voluntarily locking herself in female form. What he, she at this time, had found was true acceptance of the female aspect of herself. This was by no means a simple feat and was accomplished slowly over a period of just over a year. In this time she traveled all around central Asia picking up new and interesting techniques to add to her already formidable arsenal. These techniques were sought out and custom tailored to her female form: weapons training to compensate for her shorter reach and energy manipulation techniques focusing mainly upon redirecting and absorbing energy from the environment or opponent.

Pulling the blades closer together Ranma allowed the splashing water to hit his body and activate the curse. With a soft blue glow, Ranma cycled the energy of the falling water into vortexes in the large pool bellow the falls. As a female the technique came almost naturally and was much easier to control than in her male aspect. Sighing with the release of mental pressure Ranma continued into her ninth hour of intense Ki control.

The combination of world experience without the negative influence of her father, the concentration and control afforded by her new techniques and the final acceptance of her female aspect led to one changed Ranma Saotome returning to the Tendo compound at twenty years of age. The following months were the longest, most tiring months in the history of Ranma Saotome. With Ranma voluntarily being female the past two years had led her to pick up small mannerisms that carried over to her male side such as the rather embarrassing penchant to tuck lose hair behind her right ear or cock a hip if made to stand still for a certain period of time. These immediately began to grate on the nerves of one ex-fiancé to the extent that the Tendo home became unliveable. Ukyo's restaurant had become a chain in the greater Tokyo area and even enamoured as she was Ukyo was very rarely seen away from her business. Cologne made him sign a special contract that officially nulled the Kisses of death and marriage in favour of a war-time alliance treaty of all things. With the promise to aid the Amazons should war break out in the Bayankala Mountain range secured, they backed down not wanting to anger the God-Slayer. In fact, once Ranma moved out of the Tendo's and into an apartment of his own the only annoyance was Ryoga and the occasional Private investigator looking for one "Pig-Tailed Goddess". That had been almost three years ago.

With a final slow, deep breath, Ranma slowly stood from her seated position and directed the flow of water to set her down on the churning surface of the pool as she used her newfound Ki manipulation to spread her weight across the water and pad her way back to her jacket and slippers. On her way she stopped to top up a pair of canteens from stuff space by forcing tendrils of water up and into the waiting spouts. As she reached the shore she used a sharp blast of Ki to dry herself off and threw on her old black leather jacket over her signature red and black silks. The outfit had changed slightly and the red top was now much more form fitting and Ranma had taken to wearing chest bindings while in both forms as the added width in male form compensated for the added breasts in female form and kept her supported without loss of oxygen and minimum loss of masculinity. While the outfit had not changed greatly the body within it had grown slightly. Ranma would never be classified as tall as his male from was 5'8 with his female aspect only being 5'2. The slight increase in height over the years had been a major point for Ranma but it was a constant, if slight, blow to her pride that she was shorter than literally everyone she knew, baring a certain ninja who may or may not be a dwarf.

Looking up at the unfamiliar sky, Ranma's hand strayed to her throat and one of the recent, unwelcomed additions to her wardrobe in the form of a seamless metal band around her neck inlaid with a pair of translucent blue crystals set across from each other on either side of her neck. This collar was mirrored by a pair of heavy bracers and a pair of anklets all of which housed two of the translucent crystals. In addition to dropping her in the middle of nowhere, Pig-Boy had managed to clamp these things on her in the guise of training weights. Even with years of experience Ranma's thirst for self-improvement and training was still an all too exploitable weakness. With a small huff of annoyance Ranma set off in the direction of the smoke she had spotted earlier in the day from the top of the falls.

Having arrived just before Ranma's iridescent aura and decent from the falls, a soldier dressed in deep reds and browns lowered the cloth across its mouth as it slid its helmet from its head whispering a single word: "Valkyrur."


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

In Ranma's mind the smoke meant civilization and that was a sore bit better than the massive forested area she had initially found herself in following Ryoga's little foray into the unknown. The forest was, to her, massive and she had stumbled across a few dirt paths but had decided to bypass them for a number of reasons. First and foremost Ranma had come across too many signs that this area was not the safest place to be. After only a few days of wandering around her waterfall she had come across two different sites of heavy combat. Heavy, in her definition, meant the inclusion of what looked to be tanks if the track marks and massive shell casings were any indication. Oddly enough she had yet to happen across an actual tank husk but there had been plenty of bodies. The strangest thing about the battle areas and roads was the lingering sensation of heavy, old Ki. This was most pronounced when she discovered what looked to be a large metal acorn-shaped container with what looked to be a murkier version of the crystals attached to her new jewellery.

Ragnaid.

'Medical Ragnaid' was what the faded label proclaimed to be in the canister along with helpful instructions to hold it near a wound and turn the small knob at the base. This label also gave her a rather frightful insight into this world as it was labeled to have been produced in 1934. Since that time she had taken to storing curious objects in her personal stuff-space and currently had a stash of six or seven of these 'Ragnaid' containers and had buried the dead with the weapons she found them with while keeping weapons that seemed to have no owners.

Pushing the idea that she had jumped to the past to the back of her mind Ranma approached what looked to be a hunting cabin nestled in the trees off one of the smaller animal trails. The smoke she had seen earlier was dead ahead but much further away than she had first anticipated and seemed to be petering off from a fire much larger than she had initially thought, hence the discrepancy in distance. As she approached the cabin Ranma noticed a small grave out near a small cordoned off area that must have once been a garden. That told of possible habitation but the state of the front area and dusty windows said otherwise. Ever cautious in a new environment, Ranma crept up to the slightly open door. After a quick sweep with her Ki she knew the cabin to be empty save a few rodents. Entering quietly she immediately noticed the faded blood stains on the floor, ragged sheets and some, seemingly expended Ragnaid. Wounded, maybe dead for the patient but what had happened to the caretakers?

Two hours later and the cabin was looking much more liveable and, had anyone who known her, Ranma was being uncharacteristically domestic…with a twist. Keeping with the Anything-Goes-Martial-Arts school of EVERYTHING IS TRAINING, Ranma had been using a combination of an extremely controlled hiryu hyo toppa to blast the house free of dirt, dust, cobwebs and in an unfortunate slip of control near the start, the bed.

With the house cleaning taken care of Ranma flash heated some water from her canteens and headed up to the roof for some much needed male time. Filtering a small amount of Ki into a small aura around himself Ranma dried the small amount of water off and pulled a notepad and pencil from stuff-space. After trying to figure out if that one star was in fact a planet about half an hour later Ranma gave up on thinking of the sky and concentrated on his current situation. With the hunting cabin locating a town seemed irrelevant for the time being as it offered protection and a stable base-camp. Food didn't seem to be a problem as the cabin had a small garden and there was no shortage of wildlife in the area suggesting the combat was older than she first assumed. The only worrisome aspects of this whole situation were the constant battlefields that seemed to litter the area but a few people with guns were not particularly high on Ranma's threat list. He would have to look into those strange Ki readings he kept sensing and the older looking weapons and armor of these soldiers. His plans decided for the immediate future, Ranma dropped off the roof and set up his sleeping roll in the patch of floor where the bed used to be and promptly falling asleep.

* * *

><p>Jeriik had had a decent career to date. So far he had managed to track down twelve of the Empire's most elusive criminals and most wanted thus earning him the right to solo tracking. On any normal day this amounted to sticking your face much too close to danger by one's self but Jeriik had two sons in this war as well and wanted the best for them. The best, in this case, was money for customized armour and weapons to increase their survivability. Today he had witnessed something he prayed was an illusion but the fiery haired Valkyrur's demonstration had left a powerful impression. Once he had seen the mighty Selvaria swat a tank round from the air as a child would a ball, but he had never seen someone so calmly command nature itself. This blue-eyed Valkyrur was a mystery and worse she had been spotted on Gallian soil. Bringing a prize such as this to Maximilian may allow him to pull his sons off the front-line. With these thoughts hastening his steps, Jeriik kept up a gruelling pace; it would take near two weeks to pull his unit through all this forest as he had no reservations about a foe such as this. Already his Darcsen collection unit had grabbed near a dozen 'workers' for the mining camp at Fouzen but a Valkyrur was something else entirely. No expense would be spared.<p>

Ranma sat perplexed with one palm on her knee and her chin in the other as she examined the items of interest she had collected over the past week or so. 'She' because the smaller, more dexterous fingers where better suited to the job at hand: weapon deconstruction. The constant excursions had yielded much in the way of small arms and finally the remains of an armored unit resembling a tank that was equal parts cute and menacing. The seemingly primitive design seemed to have an engine that was nothing like anything Ranma had ever seen before and had him perplexed. The biggest mystery was the fact that the engine seemed to be filled with something resembling Ki. Almost exactly the same in feel to the heavy Ki resonating from the Ragnaid she had found earlier it pointed at a rather disturbing idea. With a sharp intake of breath Ranma shot to her feet as the realization dawned on her, "the machines here can utilize some form of Ki…" With that startling thought Ranma looked back at the maelstrom of gun parts that was the currently disassembled heavy machine-gun and pulled out a bullet. Bringing it up to her eyes she slowly rotated it. Carefully grabbing the slug and casing in separate hands she twisted and pulled. Small grains of black powder intermixed with flecks of light blue fell onto the table before her. Engaging her Ki-vision Ranma saw what she feared: Ki. Almost unrecognizable and almost insubstantial but still there nonetheless. It wasn't just the machines here; it was the entire technological tree. Everything that utilized energy in some way seemed to have some traces of this strange heavy Ki in it.

With that she dashed out the door, and into the back clearing where she had stashed what parts of the engine she could salvage. She had had little in the way of mechanical know-how in the past as there was no real need for it. Now there was real need. A machine that could harness Ki, no matter what form, meant that it could channel life energy in a much more profound way than any of Cologne's 'amplifiers'. Rummaging around in her stuff space revealed a medium sized tool chest that would do nicely for what she had in mind. As she set herself to the task of disassembling, memorizing and re-assembling the engine Ranma reflected on how far she had come with Mousse's technique. Originally the tool-chest had been stored to push the boundaries of how much weight she could store in stuff-space and was ultimately forgotten about over time as her reserves and grasp on the technique expanded.

"Hah!" exclaimed Ranma as she yanked a large tank partially filled with a softly glowing blue fluid connected to the main components of the engine. This seemed to be the fuel source and now it was testing time! With minimal effort Ranma opened the top of the tank and directed a trickle of Ki to enter the fluid. Immediately she could tell it was a mistake as the fluid in the tank seemed to hungrily latch onto the meager flow of Ki. Startled, Ranma cut the flow only to find that the crystals on her bracers began to resonate and glow. Accompanying this was a sudden grip on her Ki that funneled it directly into the now brightly glowing fluid. Eyes widening Ranma realized just how much energy this tank now contained and hastily threw it with all her might away from the cabin.

A white light. Silence. Suddenly the world around her blurred suddenly as a powerful pressure-wave blasted leaves from trees and flattened foliage around the point the tank landed some five hundred meters away. The blast forced Ranma to cover her face and, afraid to use Ki at this point, press herself to the grass as debris whipped past. A column of blue fire spat its disapproval at the sky as the initial violence of the reaction wore itself down. Raising her head a full thirty seconds later Ranma surveyed the damage to her temporary home and reached up to touch her collar and bracers in trepidation.

"What have done to me now Ryoga? What have you done now?"

Two days march from the falls he had originally spotted the Valkyrur, Jeriik and his men looked on in awe as a tongue of blue fire belched out a low thump that resonated slightly with the heavy armour of their few tanks and jarred a lose coupling in the chain holding the Darcsen captives. Silently saying a prayer Jeriik hoped his men had it in them to bring down this foe. At the same time an older Darcsen noticed the broken link in his cuffs and calmly put a hand over the break. Hopefully he could later get his comrades out of this mess. As he heard it there was a Valkyrur afoot.

A/N

Okay. So, first order of business: thank you to all of you who reviewed/faved/alert+ etc. It was a very pleasant surprise to get that much of a reception that quickly so thank you all!

In response to some of the reviews this is indeed a Valkyria Chronicles/Ranma cross so kudos to all of you that got that off a single word! Yes, this probably should be in the crossover section but its here now so here it shall stay...for the time being... This story has been kicking around in my head for a while and I thought Id get it out. Its a little more serious than Im used to writting and Im actually really enjoying this so far so here's hoping it all goes smoothly...I have my next few major plot points planned out and that should allow me to do updates about once a week or so! Hope you all enjoyed this chapter!

-Arkninja


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

A couple of days had gone by since the catastrophic 'tank incident' and Ranma had all but repaired the actual tank. For purely educational purposes he told himself. The armour had proven a challenge as he had no idea where to find more metal and had turned to Ki smelting a lot of non-serviceable weapons and larger shell casings into a type of hybrid alloy armour using a huge, flat stone and a large water basin. By infusing it with his Ki he had created an exceptionally durable material but given the amount of material to work with he only had the front three-quarters covered. The end result looked like a hodgepodge armoured gun from the front and an open ended death track from the back the turret still turned through a series of wheels and cogs and as far as he could tell the 75mm gun should still be in working order. The engine seemed to be alright besides the fact that its fuel tank was now so much dust. The shells themselves had given Ranma some trouble as they seemed to be tipped with the same crystals that were popping up in all this other-world technology. The thought of what it did before gave Ranma pause but with extremely controlled, long range Ki bursts he had managed to infuse three shells with Ki. As he figured it, as long as there was nothing connecting the Ki to his core reserves, as directly channeling it had in the initial failure, he was safe and the result fairly stable. The resulting munitions glowed a bright blue and Ranma was wondering what possible application this could be used for that would not result in peoples deaths.

Even though Ranma had come to terms with the fact that the death of the one may save the lives of the many he refused to kill unless it was absolutely necessary. To date, Saffron had been Ranma's only kill and he could foresee no reason to kill another but with the apparent war going on Ranma had the threat of professional solders who would not hesitate to kill innocents weighing on his mind. What if he were put in a situation where innocents were in danger? The horror of war was all too well engraved into history and Ranma had no illusions that this world would be any different in that regard. Still, if he could avoid it he would. To that effect he had been trying to add more power to the Ragnaid canisters that he had.

After leaving the tank by the house Ranma had ventured off into the impact crater left by the explosion that had become a "ground zero" testing site of sorts. It was where the shells had been imbued and it was here he would try the Ragnaid. Where his female aspect had the greater control, he had not been male for very long as he was constantly using the inherent benefits of his female aspect and thus decided to try it in male form for once. Test one was simple: try to 'recharge' a spent Ragnaid canister. Settling the dull canister in the center of the field Ranma started small and fired a tiny Ki ball at it.

* * *

><p>A few hours away from the cabin the Darcsens made their move.<p>

The three tanks the Imperial patrol kept with them were all lightly armored and made more for speed than anything else. Originally designed years before the conflict they were still the backbone of the Imperial armored divisions. The tank itself was heavier than anything the Galians brought to the table and boasted a frontal shield, a smaller 45mm anti-armor secondary turret as well as the larger 85mm Howitzer in its main turret. Overall it was a great machine that, on paper, was amazing but the only problem was that the tanks themselves could only seat four at a time and for the plan the eldest Darcsen had required all ten prisoners to escape with priority given to the two youngest. That meant at least two of the three tanks needed to be taken in order to allow them all to move. Three tanks would make a ton of noise so the Elder decided to keep it to the minimal two. Waiting until nightfall the entire group had made camp and the troops were called to a general meeting to discuss the tactics for the following day. This action left the three tanks and the ring of prisoners guarded by a single solder and the opportunity he had been waiting for. As was customary, the prisoners were arranged in a circle around a tree then the first and last linked to prevent escape. Quietly releasing the broken link he called out to his guard quietly asking for a drink for the youngest.

"Drink? You want me to waste water on this Darcsen runt? I'll tell you what old timer, I'll give her a 'drink' all right. You may want to watch this carefully." With a cruel glint in his eye the guard turned towards the chained girl and began fiddling with the rather ornate belt buckle of his pants. Swiftly standing before the bastard could get any farther than undoing his fly, the Elder smashed his manacles across the guard's skull. Catching him quickly as he crumpled, the Elder proceeded to relieve the guard of his keys and unlock the rest of his companions. As silent nods of thanks and wide eyes were directed at the Elder, he was busy dividing up the group and assigning them a tank. With the group split in two, with the children in the lead tank with three other adults the second tank had a full able-bodied crew to allow it to buy time for the children should the need arise.

"Surprise and stealth is the key tonight. I've removed the fuse-key from the last tank and that should keep it immobile for a while unless they have a spare. Leave it be for now. Stick close and watch our backs." With that the Elder handed over a fuse-key to the leader of the second group and dropped into the gunnery seat of lead tank and gave the order to move out as slowly as possible. As far as he could tell from the overheard discussions the Imperials planned on hitting the remains of a supply depot in the area to see if they could find some heavy ordinance before facing the Valkyrur in the area. If he could get his group to this Valkyrur he may be able to use her as either an ally or a shield against the Imperials.

As with any plan it had its share of flaws, in this case it was counting on a Valkyrur of all things for assistance. Valkyrur and Darcsens had forever been enemies and the Elder failed to see any reason for this one to be any different besides the fact that it was on Gallian soil. For all he knew it could simply be a run-away Valkyrur that hated the empire or a Valkyrur on a personal mission to destroy all Darcsens but he saw little choice in the matter. Beyond this area there was little in the way of civilization and if there was it certainly wasn't military in nature. The only other location that may have been able to help would have been Bruhl but that town had been annihilated in the opening days of the war. Going back would bring them through too much of imperial controlled Gallia and that left only the rumoured Valkyrur as the only force strong enough to oppose his people's captors.

Three hours later he noticed a blue hue had lit up the forest in front of his tank. Cold fear suddenly washed any trace of fatigue from his system as this may be the Valkyrur they are looking for. Ordering the tanks to halt he set out on foot to see what this was. No sense getting the rest involved if this turned ugly. With strict orders to keep their guns pointed at the light but not to fire or approach until told otherwise, the tanks stayed where they were. Tense and understandably nervous the Elder stepped, unarmed, into the clearing. What he saw took his breath away and relief flooded through him as he spotted, not a Valkyrur but another Darcen.

* * *

><p>Ranma had been running his small tests well into the night and had finally gotten the Ragnaid to hold a 'charge'. Said energy was now thrumming quietly within the canister and felt much more potent than the unused ones that Ranma had on hand. Taking out an unused canister Ranma experimentally brought the two of them together as far away from himself as possible with a powerful force redirection technique between his body and the canisters. With a soft 'clink' the two made contact and barring a small increase in the glow of the unused canister, the two remained stable. Sighing in relief Ranma noticed a slight presence at the edge of his testing clearing. This startled him to no end as it showed not only were his reserves lower than he had anticipated he was no longer alone in these woods as he expanded the scan and found nine other Ki signatures. It was time to meet the locals.<p>

"Name's Saotome Ranma, sorry about this."

A/N

Chapter 3! yay!

Review responses: This takes place sometime just before the liberation of Fouzen. Tho Im wanting to take it until after the first game ends. I have also come to the conclusion that more of the world needs to play Valkyria and experience the awesome! In regards to chapter one Ill probably do a rewrite of that when this is all said and done...I hate the feeling of just being dropped into something with no back story as to how we got there. Even if its a point form version I cant just leave a time gap that big...it irks me...


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

Ranma Shrugged himself out of his sweat-soaked silk and draped it casually over his shoulder as he approached the old man that had interrupted. With a keen eye he noticed the scuff marks on his wrists, the visible bruises and the dirty appearance of one kept away from civilization for an extended period of time. The old man was a little taller than Ranma and let out a sigh before bringing himself up to his full height as he seemed to repeat a similar visual scan of Ranma. Ranma noticed that the old man held no supplies, no weapons, no tools just his ragged clothes and a piercing, aged gaze which Ranma met with an even look.

Ranma bowed respectfully, a mere inclination of the head but he bowed his eyes as well, a true bow of respect and not one gives an enemy. He figured he may as well put his best foot forward in meeting his first person in this mixed up Ki-encrusted world.

"Y'look like hell ol' man. Get the rest of your people together and follow me. I have enough supplies for the lot of ya but it's all pretty basic." Well, He tried. With that, Ranma turned and motioned to the people he could sense hidden in the darkness of the trees and began to trek back to his cabin. After the few weeks he had spent there he had built up a reserve of food, mostly dried or smoked meats and some local berries and fruit he had managed to find. His years in the wild helped with the foraging but being in a seemingly different world he was cautious with what he put in his gullet. Thinking over exactly how much he had and how to split it up he idly clamped his regular Ragnaid to his belt and rolled the "Ranma Special" canister across his palms.

Behind Ranma The Elder stood slack jawed as the boy delivered his 'offer', signalled his _hidden_ group and turned his back on four anti-armor cannons to idly stroll away. The youth's clothes were fine silk and from that alone The Elder was confused. What was a seemingly royal youth doing so far in the Kloden Wildwood alone? With Ragnaid? Enough food to feed his entire group? Something didn't add up but at the moment he was not one to turn down an offer. Beyond the mysterious circumstances surrounding this boy he was extremely fit and the sleekly muscled form that stroke confidently ahead of him had its chest encased in bindings but the visible flesh was covered in scars. Scars of combat: a blade here, a scratch there, evidence of close combat leveling in intensity rarely seen in an age of firearms. This was a Warrior there was no mistaking and the Elder signaled the group forward and they eagerly followed after parking the tanks near the edge of the clearing.

After about an hour of meeting, bowing, scrapping and general thankfulness the group of dark-haired folk were all gathered in a circle around a ring of four lanterns on Ranma's floor. It had taken a good half an hour to gather up all of the weapon parts that had been scattered throughout the room and Ranma received more than his share of apprehensive looks at all of the firepower. With a distinct lack of furniture there was only room at the small table for four people and thus it was decided to sit the whole group on the floor. The meal being handed out was a combination of an assortment of dried meats, a hearty, if bland, stew and a small amount of vegetables and wild berries. This was also almost the sum total of food that Ranma had stashed away in the cabin at present which meant he'd need to go get more supplies in the morning. First and foremost was the fact that his water was running out. These 'Darcsens', as the group identified themselves as, seemed to be nothing more than people with deep indigo to black hair and a slightly darker complexion compared to the rest of the people in this world. The eldest in the group expressed his extreme displeasure at Ranma's ignorance but Ranma explained it away with a story of being raised in the wilds and the grave out front being his parents', The story seemed to work though it had garnered him a little too much sympathy from the group. As awkward as not knowing the race he apparently belonged to was infinitely better than spewing out the fact that you seemed to be either in an alternate universe or in some medication-induced hallucination. At this point he wasn't sure which one would have been worse.

The Darkscens themselves were nice enough and seemed to simply inhale the food before them, much to Ranma's approval. They ranged from the Eldest who looked to be in his sixties to the two children: a boy and girl who were fourteen and ten respectively. Ranma had also noticed the uncomfortably long stares he was receiving from the females in the group. So much so that he decided to don an extra loose shirt after toweling off his exertions.

After dinner had been finished and some stories exchanged, the Elder had taken Ranma outside to question him about the 'mobile gun emplacement' he had sitting next to his house. The open-back had initially stumped the man until Ranma had explained the lack of materials. Ranma was proud of the fact that he had single-handedly repaired the armored unit and explained the operation of the turret system he had MacGuyver-ed together. When the Elder asked about the ammunition Ranma retrieved the shells from the house and showed an awed audience his recent works with Ki. Trying with all his might to keep his ego in check Ranma attempted to explain what he did to these shells. His immaculately perfect usage of language helped him in this regard immensely.

"Well…I just…shot some Ki at it…Okay well that's not exactly it…Okay so Ki is the energy that all living things create right? Well I just adjusted my Ki to more or less match the denser signature coming from the crystal-thingy..."

"Ragnite." Coughed one of the older Darcsens.

"…Right. And then it was just a matter of firing it into the…ragna-whatever in small amounts so I didn't make it explode like the first time..." Completely bewildered faces met his explanation while others mouthed 'first time?'. Never one for awkwardness Ranma simply shrugged and suggested that everyone find a piece of floor and bed down for the night while he himself kept watch for the Imperial patrol they had informed him of. That was another topic that Ranma had not wanted to hear about: the presence of some all-powerful Empire that wanted to take over another area for little reason other than some resources. The ideal had been around for a while but the method of suddenly invading did make sense when your opposition was just on the other border the tactic of 'pillage and burn' did not sit well with Ranma. This was exactly the kind of situation that he had wanted to avoid and it looked like he had no way out of this except pray that they didn't find his cabin. If they did Ranma would have to make a choice and judging by what these ex-POWs were telling him he wasn't going to like it one bit.

* * *

><p>"So have you seen any Valkyrur in this area young man?" The Elder sighed as he eased himself against the hull of one of the tanks fanned out around the cabin. The tanks themselves had been covered in an assortment of foliage and, for being 24 tonne terrors, were fairly at one with nature in the darkness.<p>

Ranma glanced down with a questioning look and made a non-committal grunt. He had no interest in proving his ignorance once more.

"Ah. I guess not…the glow that those women make is unmistakable and their power virtually unmatched by man or machine. Those lances of theirs fire pure bolts of eldritch fury. No armor can withstand those weapons" The Elder seemed to lose himself in a memory as he continued in a whisper, "and no weapon can breach their shields…"

Ranma had heard the term used at dinner and thought it was superstition or a local term for all the dead soldiers in the area. The only thing close to this Lance and Shield outfitted maiden was a Valkyrie of Norse mythology and they were said to escort the souls of those fallen in battle. The idea that this land "housed a Valkyrur" was initially passed off as some local term for a battleground but this sounded like something a little more tangible. "Are these Valkyrur really something to be feared? I knew a lot of people who had unbeatable weapons but the person themselves weren't all that tough. I mean if you took away their weapons are they still dangerous?" scoffed Ranma as he reclined deeper in onto the tank's camo-covering.

"Aye lad. That and more. The Valkyrur are those that first cleansed this land of those who thought to bring the power of the Gods to earth and in doing so almost destroyed it. History teaches us all the follies our race once brought upon the land and if we once wielded the power of Gods what does that say of those that defeated us? Pray we don't meet the one that's supposed to be in these woods. A Valkyrur is never happy to see a Darcsen…"

Ranma cast a skeptical eye at the Old man and returned to stargazing. "I only know one thing ol' Man. Don't take history too literally sometimes after all, history is written by the victors."

At that the Elder glanced up to see the hardened look behind the young man's gaze and nodded wearily before trudging to another tank and settling in. "Then let us write the tale of our victory tomorrow my friend. That or the world may never know we even existed."

* * *

><p>As the two were preparing themselves for the coming battle the hoped would never come Jeriik and his squad, minus the guard that had so horribly failed, had stepped up the plan and hit the abandoned depot that night. What they found only managed to increase their load out by a couple of heavier caliber rifles but they did manage to salvage a medium tank. While not equal to the amount of armor lost to the Darcsens, the 38 tonne machine sported the same main and secondary turrets as the lighter models it had much thicker armor and two tertiary anti-personal turrets: one aside the secondary turret on the front of the machine and one at the rear. These 9mm tank machine guns were murder to infantry and the secondary turret sported the larger 76.2mm anti-armor cannon. This gave the crew of five ample firepower to engage <em>both<em> of the missing tanks with lethal effectiveness simultaneously and Jeriik was glad for the firepower. With the group running on little sleep Jeriik made camp in the middle of the depot. His troop had six hours to sleep and gear up. At sunrise they marched on the Valkyrur.

A/N  
>Here is chapter 4! this would have been out a little sooner but this wonderful time-sink of a creation (Deus Ex) drained my energy like so many pure heart crystals...Thats right I went there.<br>That being said thank you all for the awesome feedback! I feel honored to have interested some people to the extent that they go and check out Valkyria Chronicles! May it be the Anime, Manga or Game Tangential Learning is good for us all! This is a kinda lead-up chapter to the actual combat next time around. till then I hope you all enjoyed the chapter and Ill see you in approximately a week!

-Arkninja


	5. Chapter 5

Dawn was fast approaching and the Darcsen refugees had been slowly waking in small groups of two or three. The water basin that Ranma had used to quench the armor in his makeshift forge had been heated and the water was being used as a towel wash by the women of the group. Currently the men were stationed in the two tanks with the Elder in command. They received towels from the girls and simply cleaned their faces and hands as best they could before downing what little meat remained of last night's meal. With little to no water left in his reserves Ranma escorted half the Darcsens to his waterfall and let them fill up what they could while he, initially, stood well back to prevent a gender swap. As Ranma had reluctantly moved forward to help the youngest Darcsen with an overfull water skin the first shell was fired.

* * *

><p>Jeriik couldn't believe the nerve of these dark-haired fiends! He had stumbled across the tank tracks as he and his men back-tracked to the waterfall and, seeing as they were heading in the same direction, investigate. As his detachment crested a large, crater of a clearing in the forest he suddenly found himself on the receiving end of his own ordinance. The low thump of the 85mm Howitzer as it expelled its Ragnite-tipped shell caused his entire platoon to drop to the charred ground on instinct as the round shredded the air above their heads. A panicked shot. His own armor surged forward to shield the infantry and the medium-tank's own 85 disgorged it own blast only to have it whistle just high and to the left of the Darcsen tank, the camouflage disguising its true shape just enough to count. Behind the cover of the armor Jeriik had his unit spread out and flank through the trees on either side of the clearing. At the same time the second pilfered armored unit tracked both of its turrets towards the only remaining light tank the imperials had. It sat hunched behind the hulking armor of the medium tank and was only peaking out with its turrets roaming for another target not blocked by its bigger brother. It then came as a massive surprise to the infantry hiding behind it as the light tank's armor rattled with the impact of a 45mm cannon round that deflected into the ground near the unfortunate group flanking left around the clearing. The gunner of the Darcsen tank managed to land the second, much larger, primary turrets shot clean and the imperial tank burst as the round shredded into it, peeling back the armor and spraying shrapnel and fire. Finally seeing both tanks clearly the medium tanks gunners readjusted their sights as their crews scrambled to reload.<p>

* * *

><p>Ranma cursed under his breath as the child started badly with the roar of the cannon. The water she dropped splashing over his legs as he turned into a red-topped blur was ignored in favor of returning to the cabin as quickly as possible. By channeling all the energy that would otherwise be absorbed into the ground as she jumped Ranma propelled herself stories into the air in a deceptively calm looking super-jump. Already she could see the smoke from some sort of casualty and felt the icey realization that <em>this was it<em>. This was the moment Ranma had been dreading ever since she had discovered the true nature of the situation in this world. The Darcsens had explained the invasion, the labor camps and the senseless loss of life this war had wrought and she had made her choice. Staring up at the unfamiliar stars last night she had come to her conclusion and this had to stop. She would be the weapon of these people, she would become their strength. _Protect those that cannot protect themselves _had been her code for her entire life and it would be put to the test here. These thoughts raced through her head as she leapt the final rise and came into view of the clearing in time to see a much larger Imperial tank rolling forward with no resistance from the two flaming, smoking husks that had once been the Darcsen tanks. Blasting forth as brilliant a battle aura as she could Ranma entered the fray as a blazing blue meteor.

Jeriik gaped in unabashed astonishment as the Valkyrur descended from on high to land lightly atop the roof of the bullet-riddled cabin. What few Darcsens remained from the initial salvos had holed up in the cabin with Ranma's assorted small-arms cache. The volume of fire coming from the machine guns had all but stopped to main advance of the troops and Jeriik had been waiting on the slower moving tank to reach cannon range. With the arrival of the Valkyrur, things could get very sticky, very fast. Already down one tank, Jeriik signaled for the tank to shell the house and leave the Valkyrur without, what seemed to be, friendly support.

As the tank re-adjusted its aim Ranma blasted out an assortment of warning shots in the form of vacuum blades that augured into the ground at the feet of all three troop units and sheared the top six inches of armor off of the tank's main turret. The infantry immediately threw themselves back into cover but the tank crew was committed and its two cannons fired again. With a cry and a burst of displaced air, Ranma was suddenly between the cabin and the tank as four small explosions felled trees to either side of the house. The air hung with a sound akin to the ringing of a blade after being drawn too quickly and time seemed to stand still as the medium tank groaned slightly and then slowly clattered apart into four, smoothly cut, pieces. Jeriik nearly fainted and three of his men looked ready to throw down their weapons on the spot. Eyes wide with panic the now exposed crew had drawn their side arms and began peppering Ranma with fire. Glaring at the men with inhuman fury, Ranma strode forward and met each bullet with a concentrated blast of pressure that flattened the slugs as they spent their energy on solid air.

Now Ranma was moving. With each step she skittered across the ground towards the increasingly terrified troops that had spilled out of the tank's innards and thanked whatever would listen that the tank's ordinance had not gone up. She flowed into her attack style and slide between the stumbling infantry as they tried in vain to kill her. Broken leg, shattered ribs, collapsed lung, shoulders dislocated. Each troop suffered a different fate but none got back up as Ranma produced a simple staff from stuff space and hurled herself at the unit advancing around her eastern flank. The Dance continued.

While Ranma dealt suffering to his men, Jeriik had managed to make it to a rather interesting looking gun emplacement. The crew had been easily dealt with and now Jeriik had his hands on what was looking to be the only remaining functioning heavy weapon. The gear system had easily been figured out and his men had reported that a shell was already loaded and ready to fire. With the Valkyrur so very deadly in strangely unique ranged and close quarters combat, Jeriik knew he only had one shot and slowly adjusted the gun as to not draw the woman's attention.

Just as Ranma was spinning into a brutal combination on the few remaining infantry, her danger sense spiked and she whirled to face her own pride and joy. The shell was just leaving the barrel as she turned and time seemed to stop. She had no idea what this round was capable of but if it was anything like the fuel then everyone here was going to die. She couldn't deflect it with Ki, couldn't shoot it down with Ki, in fact, any Ki at all was simply going to set it off mid-flight. With only one option left, Ranma prayed that her new jewelry would not turn this into the biggest mistake of her life. As the round closed in Ranma prepared her Ki system for a massive influx of energy and then caught the round with a right uppercut as it reached her. The resulting release of energy was more massive than anything she could have imagined and, had she not been prepared to vent the excess, she would have been vaporized. A whirling blue dragon had howled is way into reality as Ranma vented the energy into the sky in a flash-modified one-handed Hiryu Shoten Ha. With a sudden, jarring feeling the bracer on her right arm once again established a link with her internal Ki pool and began to mercilessly feed her to her own technique. The vortex doubled its power and Ranma immediately knew she would not survive this unless she did something drastic. With literally no time to spare and many other lives on the line besides her own, Ranma did that something drastic. Forming a razor thin vacuum blade along her left palm she savagely severed her right arm at the elbow and then expanded the thickness of the blade suddenly. The expansion propelled the bracer and forearm high into the air.

The dragon seemed to collapse in on itself as the source off its power came to meet it halfway. The bracer gathered all of the latent Ki in the air and quiet suddenly released it all as the crystal matrix could hold no more. The resulting cataclysmic shock wave rocked the forest in all directions to the point that every living thing within ten miles was forced to the ground by the sheer _pressure_ of pure, released life energy. Staring up at the slowly dissipating, iridescent cloud of Ki fallout, Ranma desperately clung to consciousness as she wove her Ki over the surgically clean wound of her arm into a glowing bandage. As the last of the Ki weaves came together she pulsed her Ki once and confirmed that none perished in that final, cataclysmic moment and that thought kept her content as she retreated from the waking world in a completely voluntary, strategic withdrawal.

A/N

Okay! so heres the latest chapter (only a few days late...sorta...) more action-y and hopefully somewhat exciting. Action scenes were never my forte but then again I used to do entirely dialogue based writing...anyways... Things have been a little crazy and as short as my updates are...well you get the idea. I am without a computer for the next week and a bit so writing is harder than usual so the next update may take a while.

Notes to reviewers!

THANK YOU! I have gotten some awesome feedback from some awesome people and am greatly appreciative of this! Also Deus Ex is a very good game. immersive story, cool upgrade system and very interesting gameplay make for a great little game (30-40 hours) so it has my recommendation. Almost on par with Valkyria and the Mass Effect series in overall arkninja score...but way up there.

Hope you're enjoying things thus far!

-Arkninja


	6. Chapter 6

Near the Fouzen Labour camp:

It had been almost three weeks now and Jeriik had still not gotten used to the 'passenger' he had somehow managed to pick-up in a godforsaken battlefield. The Valkyrur was something he had been expecting but he had now seen just what it could do but something was fundamentally different about this one. The Valkyrur had always been described in The Texts as being Holy beings of fury and vengeance that lashed out and brought down all that faced them without mercy. They were the ultimate beings of combat and ruthless in their conquests and completely unstoppable. Now part of this seemed to be completely true and, had she wanted, he had no doubts that the Valkyrur could have easily slaughtered his entire division. That was just it: "had she wanted" was the operative phrase there and he had actually lost no men at all in that confrontation to the Valkyrur. While the red-haired warrior had brought down a medium tank and almost half of his troops on her own, she hadn't killed anyone. Mercy seemed to be this Valkyrur's MO and Jeriik was actually almost starting to feel sorry that he had to bring her in after she seemed willing to literally sacrifice her own limbs to prevent casualties on either side.

It had taken a good half an hour for people to start getting up after that elemental blast flattened a good portion of the Kloden Wildwood and the remaining Darcsens were nowhere to be seen. The Valkyrur just laid there, her severed arm covered in an iridescent energy that seemed to keep her blood from flowing out. Her shirt had been shredded by the energies she commanded and it left her bandaged chest exposed. The fine fabric of her pants had fared better but still showed a generous amount of her legs. Deadly as she may be awake she was still a creature of great beauty. In an act of pity one of his men had actually tried to give the woman ragnaid. That had actually been extremely surprising as as soon as the canister was activated the Valkyrur screamed and the ragnaid went dark immediately and shattered all over the glowing stump of her arm. He had never seen anything like that happen and he forbade any others to bring anything ragnite related near the woman. Another odd occurrence was that it had taken three men to lift her properly into a makeshift cart to transport her, a fact that gave Jeriik pause as it meant that she weighed a great deal more than her slight frame would suggest.

Three weeks and she was still out of it. In fact, she almost looked worse. At night she seemed to get better at an almost exponential rate but she quickly deteriorated again once the day began and the convoy started moving. It was almost as if she was weakened by the presence of so many armoured units. Jeriik kept his hunches to himself out of a debt he felt that he owed the Valkyrur for sparing the lives of his men in that crater. Jeriik was an older soldier and felt bound by a code of honor that he knew a few of the more senior troops also subscribed to. Those from before Maximilian's bloody campaign.

After a long and rather frustrating conversation Jeriik had managed an escort and now sat atop a new light tank while it towed a heavy iron cage with a small cot in it that housed the still unconscious Valkyrur. Jeriik had actually managed to convince Maximilian to send him a full armoured escort. He now sat in the middle of no less than three medium tanks a handful of light tanks with infantry compliment and, as a bonus, a massive 45ton heavy tank brought up the rear. It seemed he was sparing no expense to get her to Ghirlandaio. It was only the third time Jeriik had seen a heavy fielded for something other than an instrumental or large-scale battle. This tank seemed to be content in pointing its 122mm cannon at a comatose Valkyrur.

* * *

><p>Ranma floated somewhere between conscious thought and dreams and had been for some time now. She knew that she was currently a she. She knew she was wounded differently than she had ever been before. It was serious, that much she knew, but there was something...missing. She was also moving. There were small flickers of what she thought to be the waking world but she was too drained to know fact from fiction at this point. That was it: drained. She had little to no Ki and she just could not remember <em>why<em>. Why was she moving? Why could she not call upon her Ki? Most importantly: what was constantly draining her of what Ki she could scrape together. As time went on she managed longer periods where she was conscious enough to start pulling Ki and try to force it somewhere that would not be drained dry. She tried everything internal and almost gave up until she began to filter as much as she could to the chakra located in her head and she _knew_. She remembered the battle, the folly of creating a weapon with destructive capabilities that strong and she knew what was missing. What she still could not figure out was what was draining her. The remaining bracer, her anklets and her chocker were all strangely silent so it was something else. Something she was trying to save...there, that was it. There was something attached to what was left of her arm that was taking Ki and, in turn leaching energy to something else away from her body. She didn't know how long it took her to come to this conclusion but now that she knew how to get her Ki back, it was high time she acted.

Just as night was falling over the Fouzen Labour camp both Jeriik and Ranma opened their eyes and tracked the sun as it slowly made its way towards the horizon.

A/N

Ok bear with me here. Things with me and technology have been abysmal at best. I lost my laptop to what was described to me as "Catastrophic HDD failure". That meant I lost this once. Then it came back! and died again with a day. So twice. so I sent it away. then I got my backup out of storage. it then died as well. "Three times the cha...OH YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!". This is more of a teaser chapter than anything else and it helped get me centered into the whole writing thing. That and school is going into crazy mode with midterms etc. In essence this is all just excuses but please bear with me as things get sorted out. Once a new computer arrives I will be able to update more at my normal pace. I have no date as to when that will be but I will be continuing this story!

Notes to reviewers:

She lost an arm. Your reactions are very, very understandable and I do enjoy reading shocked messages. This means my writing is doing something right! It all has a meaning though which I will reveal in agonizing slowness! (not really it actually should play a roll in a couple chapters but we'll get there)

Thank you very much to everyone who reviewed! It helps me in ways you cannot fathom! ('-')


	7. Chapter 7

As the sun sunk lower and lower it outlined a rail-system that criss-crossed the sky above the industrial city of Fouzen. The dark shapes and billowing smoke gave the canyon-like structures the city was built in look darker and more foreboding with the lengthening shadows. The multitude of cranes fell into the twin rivers that split the town into three sections: two side areas and a central factory area that the peripheral refineries all fed into across a single bridge. The housing and refineries were both built directly on the cliff face with the slum housing at the bottom of the canyon near the river.

As they convoy passed beneath the closest set of rails Ranma noticed that she felt something, something horrible. The very air became heavier as they came closer and closer to this industrial area. In particular she could feel a concentrated area of weakening or dying life force at the base of the city that she assumed was the labor camp that the troops had been talking about.

Suddenly the ground started to vibrate and the bars and wheels of her mobile prison started to resonate and hum along with the deep rumble approaching. A mechanical monster came around a blind area in the mountain and Ranma got a glimpse of an absolutely gargantuan metal beast. The armored train's 40 meter bulk consisted of three cars and was equipped with the single biggest gun Ranma had ever seen. The front car was all sloped armor and a huge Ragnite engine with a single, double barreled machine cannon, the rear held what looked like a standard 45mm tank turret above a second double-barrel turret. The center was where the monstrous 280mm howitzer rested on a unique bed complete with a small crane to assist in loading massive shells. The armored train Equus was the mobile fortress that held rule over Fouzen and was General Gregor's command station as he oversaw the production of Fouzen.

As Equus continued to haul itself around the town, Ranma closed her eyes again and feigned unconsciousness once more. The longer she stayed lucid and aware the longer she found it was getting easier to find and stop this link to her Ki. It all traced back to her injury and, more specifically, something lodged in her flesh. It had not been the easiest thing to find because the shards of Ragnite stuck in her arm had rid themselves of the heavy Ki that they usually felt when she first came into contact with them and had instead filled with her own. The Ragnite seemed to be working like a Ki battery and was doing an excellent job of hiding itself within her Ki system as something akin to a secondary Chakra. The problem with them lay in the fact that the shards seemed to want to reconnect with any other large source of Ragnite technology. In the case of the column it was the Ragnite powered engines of the tanks in her armored escort.

The source of her weakness during the day was due to all of the running Ragnite engines as they pulled energy out the Ragnite infused fluid they used for fuel the process somehow also pulled energy from the Ragnite in her arm. It seemed almost like a much more toned down version of the draining effect that the bracers seemed to have on her Ki pool and by studying the feeling and the pull she was beginning to see how this could be used to her advantage but before she could finish her thoughts the caravan came to a halt.

* * *

><p>Berthold Gregor was one of the Empire's oldest and most experienced Generals and had a very harsh and rigid look at what it was to wage war. He saw Gallia as a handful of peasants and those beneath the glorious might that is the Empire. The Darkscens he despised to the point that he viewed them as almost being subhuman. Thus it was this harsher view that drove him to create the Fouzen Labor camps in the image of a concentration camp that was 'work-until-you-die-or-I-kill-you' in nature. Production had been on schedule as of late and with the caravan of Imperial armor due to arrive any minute, he was anxious to see this Gallian Valkyrur for himself. To say that he was looking forward to this would be an understatement. The Valkyrur were a truly frightening force and he had heard about the might of Selvaria Bles on the battlefield. This one sounded a little different. From what Jeriik had reported, this one had flame-red fair as opposed to Selvaria's silver-blue and was…merciful of all things. Extreme power was great. Mercy got you killed. Or did it? His earlier conversation with that Darcsen punk with the bandana had a good point about workers dying being counter-productive…No matter they had arrived. Slipping his gloves back on and clicking his heels sharply on the floor as he exited his personal mine cart, Gregor stepped down the small flight of stairs and looked upon the prone form of this mysterious woman.<p>

Compact. It was the first thing that came to mind when he laid eyes on the prone form of this red-haired Valkyrur. She was so…small. To have sheared the armor from a medium tank was no small feat and to have single-handedly dismantled fifteen advanced scouts and support gunners with nothing but a stick was inhuman. At the very least Gregor was expecting a statuesque figure more akin with Selvaria's stature of 5'10, yet this one was a good head shorter and slight of build on top of that. He analyzed what he could see with a critical eye and found that she was indeed extremely fit but her size apparently did not adequately showcase her power. It was a shame that she was missing her arm as Maximilian would not have a…complete specimen for his plans.

* * *

><p>She could feel it. Someone was looking at her and it was not with just a lusting gaze or even one of admiration, it was calculated and she was being measured, categorized and broken down. It was unsettling the way that this presence was doing this but she played possum and let him look, she needed the time.<p>

With a sharp barking of orders Ranma was once again on the move and listening in on solder's banter around her she learned a great deal about her current situation. It seemed she was where the group of Darcsens she had met earlier were to be sent: the Fouzen Labor camp. Soon she was being lifted and moved, cot and all, into what she assumed was a prison of some sort. She could feel Ki signatures all around her and they were not the healthiest of life forces. She was very close to the ball of what she now knew were either starved or overworked Darcsen POWs.

Feeling the pain these people were enduring Ranma swore to help these Darcsens as she had tried to do earlier in the forest. There were only two small issues with her plan: the insane amount of enemy military presence in the area and her lack of energy at the moment. She needed to rest if she was to help these people so with that in mind Ranma drifted off into untroubled sleep for the first time in weeks. A sleep so deep that she missed the sounds of a minor alarm and some gunshots as a certain group infiltrated their way into the camp. There was no direct threat to her so why bother with the waking world?

As Ranma rested, a small group of the Gallian Militia had infiltrated the camp and rendezvoused with one Zaka, a leader in the Darcsen camps not three hundred meters from where Ranma slept. The plan was to take back the city of Fouzen from the empire and, as a side-effect of that action, free the Darcsen slaves. The Gallian Militia's Squad 7 had arrived in Fouzen and was set to move at dawn.

A tremor shook Ranma's room just as dawn was breaking and it was more the light than the impact of the custom made 88mm shell from Squad 7's symbolic tank. The Edelweiss was a 32-ton custom monster and was feared invincible by many of the Imperial army. The tank boasted heavily sloped armor and was the only unit in the war that currently used the ground-breaking innovation. With the speed of a light tank and the armor equivalent of what amounted to heavy armor, it was a terror on the battlefield.

Ranma immediately flung herself off of her cot and caught herself smoothly in a cat-like three pointed stance as a shell flew much too close for her liking and splashed down in the river. Sirens began wailing into the cool morning air as the raid began in earnest and Ranma failed to suppress a groan as every single Ragnite powered defense that the city had began springing to life with varying roaring noises. Equus itself was the source of power that drove Ranma into the floor as its massive engine spooled up and pushed to train out of its central housing above where Ranma lay. The pull on her Ki from this many directions at once was overcoming the block she had on her Ki and that meant, as much as she did not want to believe herself, she was stuck in this cell until that armor went away.

* * *

><p>Up above Jeriik was not having a good time as these upstart militiamen were surprisingly skilled. The tank they brought with them was fearsome in its own right and had waded its way through anit-tank lance fire and had more than three armor kills of varied tonnage to its name an hour into the conflict. To top things off the Gallians were well organized, more accurate weaponry and a medic that seemed to be gifted with the luck of the Gods. Even with Equus firing from above the Gallians had pushed further into Fouzen than anyone could have predicted in the time they had. A shot rattled off of the side of the refinery he had taken cover behind and from his now prone position Jeriik could see a dark-haired sniper set up shop next to the Valkyrur's prison and immediately sited her.<p>

* * *

><p>Ranma was startled by the sudden thud as her guard detail seemed to collapse for no reason outside her door, rushed footsteps and then silence. Thinking that her luck may have changed for the better, Ranma hauled herself painfully to her feet and shuffled to the barred door just in time to hear a loud crack and the sound of a smooth pull of a bolt-action rifle. Leaning against the bars she turned her head just in time to see a dark-haired sniper take a round to the chest and hit the ground near her feet with a gasp of shock. Without thinking Ranma pulled one of the canisters of her special brand of Ragnaid from stuff space but the use of Ki that really was not all there resulted in her sagging against the door and dropping the canister onto the girl who clutched it in shock at both a person being there and the glowing canister falling on her.<p>

"Im…Im alright…" the woman wheezed out as she pushed a hand under one the two small armored disks on her chest to feel the bruise. "Lucky for me the bastard was further…away than he should….be for a killing shot…good shot though…" She looked up at Ranma from her crouched position as she caught her breath and Ranma got a good look at her. Standing she would probably be slightly taller than her male form with short black hair that covered one of her eyes, sharp features and a very athletic figure. She was beautiful but in the way that a big cat was beautiful as it hunts for prey. "My name is Marina Wulfstan," she spoke in a professional tone now that she had her wind back and dark eyes stayed locked with Ranma's as she stood to her full height.

"Im Ranma. Nice to meet ya…Sorta…" Ranma managed to get out before she sank slowly to the floor as close to a dozen tanks rolled for the labor camp, and by proximity, her.

"Im going to get you ou—"

"No. No time…leave..."

Marina opened her mouth to argue but stopped as the engines broke through the last of the fog surrounding her senses from her earlier brush with Death. She had no choice, she was exposed if those tanks came any closer and she could not move herself and a crippled prisoner to safety. Glaring at the injustice of it Marina gave a single, sharp salute and sprinted away. Just as she made it around a building, the tanks came into view. At the head of the column was a medium tank sporting what looked like a double barrel flamethrower instead of its classic cannon for its main weapon. A weapon that began to turn itself towards the full labor camp beside her.

Ranma felt useless. This world was crazy. This war was insane. Her power was being sucked away and that girl…Marina, had taken her last Ragnai-wait. She had been given Ragnaid in the clearing after her self-amputation. She had drained it. Not the other way around. That was her key here!

"The connection goes both ways…"

She was the one with power, not the crystals. She was the one with the control, not the Crystals. She was one that would wield this power, not the Empire. Confidence rushed through her energy starved veins and she drank deeply of her inner power for the first time what felt like decades. Glaring at the tanks seconds away from committing mass-genocide, Ranma reached out to her bracer, anklets and choker for the first time and when they latched onto her meager Ki pool she in turn reached through the Ragnite in her arm and _pulled_.

* * *

><p>Silence suddenly dominated the evening as every single Ragnite powered device within 200m of Ranma's prison shut down. The sound of rending, tortured metal cut through the sudden silence as the iron prison burst with a sudden blast of blue energy. Fingers of frost crept out in an ever-expanding ring around the twisted prison and Imperial soldiers backed away in fear from the supernatural ice.<p>

In the upper areas of the city the Gallian forces stopped and stared as a bonfire of blue energy lit up the lower levels of Fouzen and illuminated an armored division and what looked to be the last stand of the Imperial forces left at Fouzen. As most of Fouzen stood still a secondary burst of energy lifted dust in a ring around the building and Ranma rose from the wreckage and howled her displeasure at the setting sun.

A/N I finally got my comp back! I thought I would give a good proper update (there is a definite spot were I would normally end a chapter but I had a couple scenes to add onto it. Thank you again for all of the reviews and for sticking with with me through this rather long period of failed updates. I apologize and will also say that with final projects knocking on my door the next update my take a little longer than my old standard of about ten days. That said I will do my best to update more frequently now that my means of writing is back in service!

Many thanks!

-Arkninja


	8. Chapter 8

A wave of power washed over Alicia as she put the finishing touches on securing a Ragnite bomb to the support structures holding up the rail system over Fouzen. The pressure wave was enough to press her against the support and filled her eyes with dust as a brilliant column of blue energy blasted away the cloud-cover and exposed the dusk sky. The energy felt…cold…and concentrated to the point that it raised the hairs on her arms and neck and pimpled her flesh as it raked over her skin in waves. Below her Marina was holding hand to a circular bruise around her right eye from where her scope had smashed into her face from the wave. Marina knew exactly what building it was that exploded like that. She had met the crippled girl's eyes and left her to die but yet she felt a strange sense of relief as she replaced her palm with her scope and witnessed the one armed girl rise from the wreckage as twisted steel began to rise with her. With a quick shout to get Alicia's attention she sprang away to find different cover as Equus thundered its way onto the rails above. Alicia nodded in understanding as she furiously rubbed her tearing eyes clean and sprinted back towards Welkin, the Eidlwiess and Zakka, Alicia failed to notice that her body has jarred lose one of the ignition wires on the Ragnite bomb. A tortured howl followed her away from the canyon.

Ranma was lost in it. She swam in a vast sea of power she had not felt in near a month. Her Ki reserves were filled to bursting and she _loved_ it. Covered in all manner of scrap metal and tortured building materials she shivered in the ecstasy of her own power. She could feel the Ki of her tormentors. Feel the Ki of the tormented souls nearby. Her power sang within her veins as her power crashed ever higher and she felt some vent explosively into the air around her. It sang for vengeance. It cried for blood. It howled for death.

_NO_.

With startling clarity Ranma overcame her bloodlust and sank deeply into the Soul of Ice. She had to save the innocents first. The Imperials had crossed the line by planning to execute the Darkscens on little more than a whim before they pushed back up the canyon. They would pay, but not with their lives if she could help it. Not yet. Pain would be their moral tutor this night. With her resolve set and her power restored, Ranma rose to feet to be met with the sight of near 50 imperial ground infantry of all types and near twenty armoured units of different tonnage. She threw her head back and howled her fury at the now exposed sky and the cry echoed throughout the un-natural stillness of the canyon. Bringing her head back down Ranma's eyes narrowed as she set her sights on the tank with the perdition turret and raised what used to be her right hand on instinct.

In her mind the techniques were all neatly categorized on a mental shelf of martial destruction and deep within the Soul of Ice usually granted clarity of mind and, as a result, much more thought out combat. This time Ranma was filled with, surrounded by, and literally super-saturated with a power that was hers yet…thicker, more potent and intoxicating. Instead of calling out an attack technique or even going through the slashing motion associated with a vacuum blade Ranma simply wished that which was in front of her was no more. The power complied. The Ragnite saturated Ki flowed into the crystal structures imbedded in her flesh and coalesced the latent Ki and Ragnite in the air around Ranma and focused it into a ½ inch iridescent beam. This all happened in a fraction of a second and suddenly the perdition tank and its three closest neighbouring tanks all lit up like a miniature sun before violently ceasing to exist with a howl of displaced air.

Men flew through the air as the crew of the tanks were displaced by the wailing energy with three splashing down in the river and another four bouncing painfully off of a roof some 200 meters downrange. Ranma paid it no mind and immediately twirled into her attack dance that sent armored units and men alike running for safety and failing horribly. Ranma pulled the force of the river to her bidding and swirled it around her as a shield against the initial salvo of gunfire and coalesced an iridescent rod of Ki that attached to her right arm and deliberately kept the edges blunted. With a sharp cry she burst through the wall of water and collected the spend slugs from the river and sent them careening into the viewports of five tanks to ricochet within. Ranma drew out the punishment she delivered upon the remaining forces and made them confront their fate. She cut off their attempts to run and danced through their ranks as they desperately tried to keep from shooting their own. All the while she dealt suffering and pain through quick strikes and sharp blows to soft areas on their bodies. She denied them death as she taught them with pain.

* * *

><p>"Magnificent isn't she?" The Doctor smiled as the initial beam cut the cloud cover of the evening and a pressure wave crested her position high above Fouzen.<p>

"She is much stronger than I would have believed doctor. Even crippled she wields her power to a degree that Selvaria cannot match and without the aid of a lance even!"

"I can see why Maximilian wants her so badly. Come we are going to need all of what we brought." So saying, one Doctor Kriena hopped out of the turret of her personal transport and signalled to her personal guard to lock and load. Unfazed by the presence of the opposite gender, Kriena stripped off her overcoat, shirt and slacks to don her padded and specially insulated combat under suit. The suit was specially designed after studying the effects Sylvaria had on the Gallian forces at Barious and through various tests thereafter. It was fitted with a special type of Ragnite absorbent material and featured a rat's nest of wires that connected to an armored backpack. Kriena pinned her long blonde hair out of her eyes and away from the latches of her chest plate as her Lieutenant dressed her. The armor was sleeker than the usual imperial fair with smooth lines and overlapping plates along her belly, chest and back. There was no exposed cloth in these suits either; even the joints were skilfully crated from interlocking and rotating metal pieces. The matte black plates whispered over each other as she knelt to clasp shut her greaves. The arms of the suit were similarly housed but her right shoulder sported a large rectangular plate with a honeycomb finish. This emitter plate combined with a special type of Ragnite converter on her back armor created the perfect defense against a Valkyrur. With a manic grin on her face Kriena straightened to her surprising height of 6"5 and accepted her rifle from her Lieutenant and plugged it into her backpack. This night her life's research came to fruition. With one last nod to the Lieutenant of her unit, she slid her horned helm over her face and laughed. This night they hunted Valkyrur.

* * *

><p>Jeriik was still on the side of the canyon of Fouzen when the valley lit up and Jeriik <em>knew<em> that his night just got exponentially worse. Without even having to glance back, Jeriik signalled his men to duck and cover. Just as the words were leaving his mouth a massive shockwave hit and sent him and a handful of his men careening _up_ the incline and over a lip onto flat ground. What he met there was not what he was expecting. Gearing up in front of him was what looked like a specialized unit that Jeriik had never seen before. The sleek black armor barely glowed in the unnatural light of the Valkyrur and it highlighted across the overlapping plates and closed face masks in a haunting way. The fact that these soldiers carried the Imperial crest on their breasts only served to give him a deeper chill than he had from the frigid air from below. These were of Maximilian's specialized sector and not something that he had ever seen deployed into direct, offensive combat. A huge soldier with a horned helm instead of the uniform smooth topped helm the rest of the unit save one that sported a single horn, stepped forward and towered over Jeriik. The curvature of the armor suggested that the soldier was female but her stature boggled Jeriik's mind as she stood nearly a foot taller than him and slung a rifle as long as he was tall as if it weighed nothing. The soldier's breathe was misting out of the grill of their helm and Jeriik could almost hear the smile behind the mask as the tinted shield seemed to examine his eyes for something that it seemed to find. The massive soldier straightened again and nodded to Jeriik before moving him aside with its arm and signalling the rest of the black unit to the ledge to watch the Valkyrur at play.

* * *

><p>Ranma danced through a lead storm as the remaining 15 or so foot soldiers opened fire in panic and hosed the area around Ranma with shots. With frightening calm Ranma simply seemed to phase through the hail of bullets to appear before the viewport of the very heavy tank that had escorted her in the convoy. The illumination from her battle aura and Ki baton revealed a terrified driver and the hatch in the turret clanged open as the tank's commander attempted to use a manually operated machine gun mounted on the top of the turret. Ranma cocked her head to the side and made a fist with her left hand. Two meter long Ki claws flashed along her knuckles with a snap-hiss and she plunged the hissing blades into the front of the tank and extended them before twisting her arm and leaping atop a fresh victim near the middle of the armored group. The shredded remains of the heavy tank peeled open in segments and ragged, bloody men fell out. Ranma needed them to learn. Howling again, she sliced the tank she stood upon in two with a flourish of her left hand and proceeded to twirl 13 tonnes worth of tank with her remaining hand and swat the more heavily armored soldiers that still stood into buildings and unconsciousness. Standing in the middle of a nightmarish field Ranma surveyed her handiwork and smirked as the ice built thicker and thicker across the tortured soil. The ground sported strange furrows and long, impossibly thin cuts laced, not only the ground, but the surrounding buildings as well. Shredded, peeling metal that was once over 100 tonnes of Imperial steel lay strewn about the area like confetti and moaning, bleeding soldiers added that nice flair of color to the grizzly tableau. Suddenly Ranma's danger sense pinged and she looked up to see Equus sitting high above Fouzen with its 120mm howitzer pointed slightly over her head.<p>

* * *

><p>All this time the Darcsen labourers have that had been trapped in the camp used the lull in the combat to begin escaping along the river bank away from their glowing saviour. The awed people ran as fast as they could on legs shaking from fear, relief and an indecipherable sense of confidence that everything would soon be alright. They had no idea that a half tonne shell was primed and aimed directly at them.<p>

* * *

><p>On the opposite bank of Jeriik and his band of black ops troopers Zakka had been furiously mashing the detonator for the Ragnite bomb that Alicia had planted and swore she armed properly. Squad 7 was growing increasingly more alarmed as Equus made its appearance over the river and began the laborious process of turning its main cannon towards the whirling redhead that was just finishing up devastating a battalion worth of the Imperial's finest and the now fleeing Darcsens. Then the Valkyrur looked up.<p>

Ranma could feel the Darcsens running and she knew what that gun overlooking them wanted. She could not allow that. Looking up at the gun from nearly 500 hundred meters away Ranma once again sighted down her right arm and the glowing rod turned inwards on itself and split into a number of floating ring of Ki rectangles that rotated around a central point. At the point what would have been a Moko Takabisha the size of a pickup truck formed, contracted into a sphere the size of a cue ball and leapt at Equus with a loud crack as it cleared the sound barrier. The pinprick of light impacted the center of the armored train and violently expanded in a directional cone that shredded the side of the train facing Ranma vaporizing Equus' main cannon along with the entire center section. A second blast rocked the evening as Zakka's Ragnite charge finally detonated and sent the remains of Equus to the bottom of the river along with her crew.

Ranma tensed as the light had revealed something that his Ki enhanced senses had missed: a large group of black armored soldiers was amassing on the slopes nearest her and she had not felt a single thing from them as of yet. Concentrating more these troops felt like holes to her. Every living thing gives off Ki, it was a universal fact. If something did not then it was either unnatural or dead. She flared her aura into an unfocused blaze of energy that lit the area around her and the pressure wave cleared away much of the debris left from her initial fight. Ranma stood passively and merely reformed her baton into a long thin blade of a Jian and considered her options. While she had a stash of firearms that would be useful against this many enemies in heavy armor she would be unable to reload one-handed while in combat. Her dominant hand held a precision weapon capable of piercing heavy armor and incapacitate with relative ease. Her left hand she simply curled into a fist as it looked like there was only one option left: smash the armor until the people inside couldn't fight. In the glow of her aura Ranma saw one of the tallest females she had seen as it stood head and shoulders above most of the other black armor.

Both women examined the other as each waited for the other to make the first move as the Darcsens fled to safety.

A/N

Well here is the latest chapter! I am sorry about the cliff-hanger ending to this one but final projects are due in the next week and a bit and so I will not be able to write until after they are done…so saying Im giving you what I have currently! New characters have surfaced! Intrigue! And before anyone asks the Black Armor is an idea of my own and not from Valkyria. That said, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and, as always, thank you to everyone who reviewed! To everyone who is worried about Isara: you will just have to wait and see! Maybe shes ok! Maybe not! Maybe we never mention her ever in the story! The last one is not likely and I have some ideas for Squad 7 coming up so stay tuned!


	9. Chapter 9

Ranma had little to go on here and it seemed as though these new armored troopers were an elite division of some sort due to the inclusion of the Imperial crest on armor that was leaps and bounds ahead of anything he had yet to encounter in either world. The black armor looked almost organic and covered each soldier completely in a matte black shell of protection. The inclusion of a large, shoulder mounted shield told her that they could probably take hits but the guns had cables attached to each soldier's back. That was new.

Without warning the air was suddenly filled with grenades as they arched over the front lines of the black armor and exploded around an unimpressed Ranma. The flashes and subsequent release of Ragnite energy into the air did not disperse but formed into streams of glowing particles that were absorbed into the shoulder armor of the lead trooper. Seams along the limbs and torso of the suit began to glow a dull blue and a pattern outlining the woman's abs and curves lit up as well until the visor and horns finished off the lightshow by igniting in blue as well. The woman seemed to shiver in place as she powered-up.

Ranma watched this all happen from within a bubble of force, that had warded off the initial blast, with curiosity. Maybe this was a fight she could enjoy and stretch her legs, so to speak. Too many fights had become one sided as of late and she wanted a challenge once more. So she let the enemy power-up and merely lowered her stance slightly and brought her free had up while cocking the bladed limb in preparation for the ensuing conflict.

Kriena loved this rush, this feeling that the armor gave her when charged with Ragnite. To date it had only seen combat in simulations with Ragnite grenades and scores of regulation troopers. She desperately wanted to test it against a worthy opponent. What was a few scores of troopers against a demi-god after all? _Nothing_.

The immense woman locked her gaze with Ranma and opened the floodgates with her rifle leading. The beam of Pure Ki that came blasting out the end took Ranma by surprise and it ripped through her barricade like so much paper. Twisting desperately Ranma managed to get her Jian between her chest and the beam in time to divert it away from her vials and took only a graze to her side as a result. _First blood_ and she hadn't been the one to draw it. Now things in this place were getting interesting. Ranma landed from her spin and proceeded to rebound in a crescent around her charging foe. The beam of Ki from her rifle fired three more times to hit naught but air as Ranma seemed to dance off of air. The missed beams followed a similar pattern to the grenade residue and soon other suits around the combatants were powering-up as well. To test a theory Ranma fired a set of Moko Takabishas at both her opponent and the ring. The blasts were absorbed and even seemed to be drawn to the shoulder plates. Two suits in the outer ring overloaded and had their backpacks explode but the leader simply glowed all the more. The armored woman was fast and getting faster as the fight progressed. Time and time again Ranma was forced to retreat as the rifle was now spewing out a constant beam of Ki that tore at the ground and sheared anything it touched except for black armor. Ranma loved it.

With a snap decision Ranma reversed herself mid-spin and dropped low before launching herself at ground level as the beam passed over her. The low attack took her opponent by surprise and she flinched back while trying to bring her gun to bear. Ranma was faster and the woman's rifle suffered for her lack of reaction time as it fell to pieces under Ranma's Ki Jian. Ranma landed an amaguriken to the woman's torso before blasting the ground in order to ascend as near thirty beams lanced into her previous position. The other soldiers had joined the fray and Ranma was more than happy to oblige them.

Kriena desperately tried to catch her breath but her dented armor would not allow her to. Crawling behind the protective cover that her now engaged troops provided, she tore off her chest-plate and helm to cough up blood and gasp for air. She could hear the impacts of flesh on metal and the yells of both the Valkyrur and her troops but Kriena smiled still. The armor had done its job and she was still alive despite both energy-based and physical attacks that had sundered tanks just moments before. This Valkyrur could easily give a fully armed Selvaria a run for her money and, even with one arm, stood a good chance of defeating Maximilian's guard dog. A quick application of Ragnaid had Kriena back on her feet and scrambling back to her armored transport for a different tactic.

Meanwhile Ranma was having the best fight she could remember. The troopers were tough, fast and absorbed Ki attacks only to come back stronger than ever. The glow of their armor and her aura set the night afire with haunting shades of blue that refracted and reflected off of the ever-present ice that coated the battlefield. Ranma's Jian seemed a living thing to the soldiers as the delicate blade traced glowing arcs through the air as the red-haired Valkyrur twirled it about her person redirecting energy blasts and clumsy hand-to-hand attempts. Every so often the blade would reverse and suddenly come straight through the afterimage of its previous arc to impale a hapless limb or sever weapon cabling on the unfortunate victim. Even with her immense speed Ranma was not unscathed from all of this fighting and sported light burns across her arm, torso and legs with her clothing suffering more and more with each near-miss.

High above Squad 7 was beginning its withdrawal to rendezvous with the Darcsen refugees while the Valkyrur occupied the Imperials. Marina was staring down at the conflict and could not stand to sit idle and do nothing to help this woman a second time. So saying she set herself up to provide extremely long-range support and took a calming breath as she brought her rifle up and chambered a round as she ignored her CO's frantic whispering.

Back in her transport Kriena had primed a high-powered Ragnite siphon designed to knockout the power supplies of enemy vehicles and then use the energy as a weapon or shield for the transport. The siphon replaced the secondary turret on the front of the machine and the main turret was a high-powered ragnite cannon that ran off of the energy collected through the siphon. Just as she was bringing the siphon and cannon to bear on the still engaged Valkyrur the red-haired girl looked up and made eye-contact with her through the sighting array of the siphon and Kreina depressed the trigger.

Four separate events all happened in an instance and Ranma suffered for them. As Ranma sensed Kriena's attack she had just lunged through a soldiers arm but tagged the Ki absorbent shoulder armor of the trooper behind her target causing her to lose control of her Ki for a fraction of a second as the armor tried to drain her before she disengaged the blade. In that moment she looked up to see a modified medium tank with both frontal turrets aimed squarely at her. A trooper near the outskirts of the battle got a clear view of the Valkyrur as the trooper she stabbed dropped and opened a hole in the conflict. He fired for the Valkyrur's abdomen as Maximilian wanted her alive. Marina was scanning for a safe target to shoot at when she spotted a lone trooper outside the battle she put a Ragnite tipped round through his visor just as he fired. Ranma was caught flatfooted as her Ki was not fully hers at the moment when the beam struck her in the lower right side of her stomach. Marina's bullet rocked the trooper's head back and the rifle pulled up as a result, racking the beam up and across Ranma's body and face. It burned a bloody line up and across Ranma's torso, between her breasts, and up her face to leave a burned red furrow straight up across her left eye. Luckily she reacted instinctively and shielded her eye with the bracer on her arm. Finally Kreina fired and the Ranma's world went from flash agony to blissful unconscious as her vision tunneled into the purple vortex of the cannon.

In an uncharacteristic show of emotion, Marina Wulfstan growled out her annoyance and puller her lips back to bear her clenched teeth as she continued to rattle off killing shots into the mass of black armor bellow her when she saw the Valkyrur fall. The rippling distortions her bullets left began to pile up and soon lances of light traced back along them forcing Marina to duck after one parting shot that rattled off of the viewport covering of the strange tank. Still fuming she stalked back to her Welkin who looked at her strangely as she glowered at the air over his shoulder before waving her past and continuing with the retreat while watching the normally stoic woman have a near meltdown.

* * *

><p>A couple of weeks later found Marina wandering around Squad 7's garage looking for one Isara Gunther, her CO's adoptive sister and resident mechanictech expert. Her father was the designer of Squad 7's legendary tank and Isara herself was its pilot. The young Darcsen had prover herself time and time again and was the only Darcsen she knew that responded to having a last name. Most Darcsens had been stripped of their last names as punishment for what they had taken from the world with the Darcsen Calamity years and years ago. Regardless of the past Isara had proven herself to Marina and was slowly but surely working her way into the hearts of all of Squad 7.

What had brought Marina to the Techno mage's den was the intense looking Ragnite that the Valkyrur had dropped on her the night at Fauzen. She had taken it out of her pack only recently while replenishing medical supplies and noticed that it was much brighter than her standard issue Raganaid and it felt…powerful. The feeling it gave off was hard to describe but she felt slightly better knowing it was around. It seemed to make her feel better when things got hard after she watched the Valkyrur fall. That night she held the Ragnaid in her hands as she reflected on anything she could have done to save that girl. The act of simply holding it served to make her feel slightly better about herself and since then had been kept as a kind of good luck charm. What changed today was that she had overheard Isara and Rossie having an unusually strong argument that escalated into an ugly screaming match for seemingly no reason. Words were exchanged that should not have and the end result was an extremely distraught Isara.

Now Marina had a reputation for being stand-offish and anti-social to the point that seeing her in the company of others was considered an extremely noteworthy event. Contrary to popular belief it was nothing negative that drove Marina to behave is such a way, it was embarrassment and a sense of not belonging that led her to shy away from people. Being raised by her Grandfather in the wilderness had led to her being anti-social as a reflex as being around other people simply unsettled her. This was compounded by the fact that she was stern, blunt and uncommonly beautiful had put her into a category of women that some men found horrifying and a larger number seemed to find incredibly attractive had led to her academy years to be filled with less than desirable encounters in the romance department. The female gender offered little respite as her unparalleled accuracy from an extremely young age had led her to be resented by the older students and thus outcast again. Squad 7 was the only place where she felt that she was starting to belong. A family she had not had in over a decade. This group was extremely important to her and she would do anything it took to keep the people in it happy. This included giving up her special keepsake in the hopes that its strange powers could somehow help the small Darcsen.

* * *

><p>On the top of the north tower of the Citadel of Ghirlandaio stood the right hand of the Emperor, the Imperial Judicator and blindly devoted woman: Selvaria Bles. The wind picked up her short cloak and hair gently as it blew over the fields that served as an open killing ground for Ghirlandaio's defenses. The citadel had become the front-line base for Maximilian's crusade into Galia and as such had been fortified beyond what would normally be considered sane. Weapons of every caliber extended from what used to be stained-glass windows and walls were patrolled with diligence. The sun was just beginning its decent and the silver haired Valkyrur had just finished her mid-day meal and taken to the roof to digest both her food and the latest information. It seems that the red-haired Valkyrur had been taken into Kriena's little underground laboratory after falling to the combined effects of her blasphemous weaponry and an energy drain that was designed to work on entire tank divisions. How the girl managed to survive was a complete shock to Selvaria as she doubted that she herself could take that kind of concentrated punishment and escape with her body in a solid state let alone a simple coma and some wicked scaring.<p>

Kriena had brought the surprisingly small woman, if her sources were correct, to the lab sometime last week and Maximilian had forbade Selvaria from visiting Kriena. The thought of seeing that mad woman in her own lair once again actually scared the normally unflappable Selvaria due to a simple thing: her past.

Valkyrur were and still are an extreme rarity in times of peace as they seem to only show up when the world is at war. Such was a time where Selvaria's silver hair loudly proclaimed her heritage and she was taken from the orphanage to grow up under the knife. The one behind that knife had been Kriena's equally maladjusted father and he had endlessly experimented upon her body until she passed out and then continued so she would feel her new sutures when she awoke. This went on from before she could remember until adolescence, until Maximilian had found her. As the Emperor's son he was allowed access to the labs and on one such occasion spotted her bloodied form on a smaller operating table near to back of the lab wreathed in blue fire . Her power had been what attracted him when she finally lashed out at the lab coat wearing monster that desecrated her so. The inferno of Ragnite infused energy had atomized the bastard when he had miscalculated her anesthetic due to a large growth spurt. Scalpel still embedded in her flesh, she had lashed out instinctively and scorched the doctor into so much carbon in an instant. Through the falling ashes had been the cold, calculating eyes of Maximilian. He had freed her, fed her, and she loved him for it.

Her love was not healthy and she knew it. Hell, everyone that had seen them interact knew it but she could not help herself. He had saved her life and it now belonged to him. She would die for him. Her position at his side was unquestioned. His need for her power was constant and unchanging…until now. The arrival of a second, more powerful entity sparked alarms in Selvaria's mind and she hesitated now. She wanted to know if her place was secure. She needed to be by Maximilian. She needed this life. She needed it and she would NOT lose it to some comatose slip of a girl with only one arm!

Her fear-induced fury built and built until it physically manifested in a tight wrapping of blue fire around her frame and her red eyes glowed dangerously as she spun on a gilded boot heel and marched for the stairs.

She would see this Valkyrur. Maximilian's order was a mere shadow in her mind behind the overwhelming need to validate her spot at his side.

A/N

Seasons Greetings everyone! Here is the long overdue chapter 9! straying away from Ranma for a little bit of some other characters! Hope everyone is enjoying things so far and again I apologize for the slow update. Thank you to all that reviewed! I love getting feedback and hope you all enjoy reading the tale I spin! I randomly got a couple more stories pop into my head but none are fleshed out or even in any phase of development due to me wanting to finish this first (at the rate we are going it could take a bit). but Ranma x Tiger and Bunny = amusement :D Just think about how much fun that would be!

Anyways,

Please read and review! I always enjoy them! Happy Holidays everyone I hope you have a good winter break!


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Kriena looked over her wall of notes on her latest project and 'hmmm-ed' in thought as she reviewed her progress of the past few weeks. The tiny Valkyrur had been in and out of the induced-coma-like state that Kiena's machines had managed to place her in since her capture near a month ago. The redhead had so far managed to simply confuse and frighten her with every new thing she discovered. In her initial assumption Kriena had thought that the Valkyrur's wound would have been fatal when combined with the energy drain of her anti-ragnite troop and armored units but the girl pulled through with surprising ease. Given the scar that marred her abdomen and face it would have seemed that the wound was taken years ago and not the astounding few weeks that had actually passed. Her defence was just that strong. Taking this information Kriena had then tried to test just _what_ made her so durable: was it her skin? Muscle? Some strange Valkyrur artefact she had not found yet? She had to know.

So saying she took what remained of the Valkyrur's right arm and began her testing. Blades initially cut the skin with about three times the required force to penetrate the average soldiers and that alone was of some concern but it failed to explain her resistance to energy blasts so testing continued. Next she tried the same test but did so with her restraining machines turned to a lower setting. The results here were astounding! When Kriena held the limb and went to cut, the girl reacted by jerking the limb out of the blade's path. Startled Kriena had looked to check her machines to ensure that the red-head was still under. Sure enough there was nothing that should have indicated any level of cognition and yet the girl continued to dodge. Finally fed up she had resorted to gripping the scalpel in each of her fists and viciously stabbing at the infuriating limb with wild abandon. This continued for a good twenty minutes until, fed up, she had given the task to two of her assistants promising a kiss for the one that stabbed the offending limb. Eventually one managed to do it but the blade snapped off and ricocheted into the victorious intern's forehead. Similar tests involving less than willing participants yielded similar results and it seemed that the more energy the Valkyrur had, the more durable she became even without cognitive function. The unconscious defense was something that she had never seen and it concerned and excited her to no end. The idea of trying to replicate this into her prototype armor sent shivers down her spine. To add to this the girl was actually trying to adapt her body to produce more energy than Kriena's machines could drain out of her. Every couple of days or so Kriena needed to adjust the power of her siphoning machines in order to keep the girl down and it was starting to get ridiculous.

The energy that her subject was using was also very interesting as it seemed to be a blend of the energy used by Selvaria and the plasma that Kriena herself employed in her ragnite cannons. Kriena had initially discovered the energy while trying to distil Ragnite for use in the artificial Valkyrur suits that Maximilian had asked for when she was initially brought in under the imperial R&D after the rather amusing demise of her father at the hands of Selvaria. Even if Selvaria had taken her father from her Kriena really couldn't find it in herself to blame the Valkyrur and, in fact, blamed her father's carelessness when working with an extremely volatile test subject. Her father did manage to teach Kriena one very important lesson: when experimenting on an entity that can vaporize you, always make sure they are cannot wake up. Ever. To this end the Valkyrur was kept under for the entirety of her experimentation as well as when she was not experimenting and simply in holding her while she went over her findings, wrote up her horrifyingly thorough reports and thought up further things to test.

Taking a step outside of her inner-monologue and once again aware of her surroundings, Kreina peeked through her office blinds and noticed the statuesque figure that had been showing up in her quant little lab from time-to-time: one Selvaria Bles. The silver-haired woman seemed to take quit the interest in the Emperor's latest endeavour and seemed almost…threatened by the existence of another Valkyrur. Compound that with the discovery of yet another Valkyrur on the Gallian side of the conflicts and suddenly her position as the all-powerful and undefeatable Selvaria was starting to look threatened for the first time. Such it was that Kriena found the other Valkyrur's presence rather entertaining as she would simply stare at the prone, incapacitated form of her supposed 'rival'. While the Valkyrur would never come out into the open while Kreina herself was on the floor she had seen the Valkyrur sneak in when Kreina had been holed up in her office for long periods of time to star at her nemesis. In this campaign alone the little red-head was beating Selvaria in just how impressive her power was. Selvaria had a starring role in a miniature campaign of her own but had always had a squad behind her at the very least. The red-head had decimated almost a third of the Empire's armor present in Gallia and that had forced Maximilian to call up more armored units and delayed his push along the coast by a couple of weeks. Selvaria had layed waste to a Gallian armored division but had, to date, been defeated by the Gallian _militia_ of all things.

Turning to the far wall of her study Kriena looked over the other half of the puzzle of her patient. The jewellery that the Valkyrur wore seemed to be similar in make to the spears and shields classically wielded by Valkyrur. The bands themselves were of an unknown material and there was no way to remove a sample as was proven by Kriena trying everything short of ordinance to try and get them off of the red-head. The crystals were something that greatly intrigued the good doctor as something that had never been seen before and the properties of these crystals had given Kriena the insight she had needed to begin completion of other project: a man-made Valkyrur. The crystals seemed to be made out of some sort of hybrid between the energy that this new Valkyrur used, the same that her weapons produced, and 100% purified ragnite. The latter should not have been possible as it was a ragnite crystal always contained flaws and other contaminants from forming deep within the earth. To date there was no real way to get ragnite to crystallize again and most larger ragnite constructs where either ragnite plated or carved from a large crystal. Even the focus crystals that Kriena's rifles used were made from several ragnite shards fitted together and even they were only about 75% pure.

The amount of energy that these crystals could focus or channel was astronomical and helped to explain some of the Valkyrur's power: her jewellery were her weapons. The actual body itself was trained to an absurd level and Kriena was almost sexually excited to find the amount of scar tissue present on the girl given her estimated age. Anything that was cut this much had to have such a wonderful tolerance to pain. She liked to giving pain and the more a subject could take the better. The muscle-tone and metabolism of her guest was off the charts and it stood to reasoning that the Valkyrur could probably still operate at a level close to her previous performances with or without her focusing crystals. Even more exciting was that given just what these crystals were capable of, the Valkyrur had only begun to scratch the tip of their power. If she ever learned to harness their full potential then the Empire was finished. So deadly were the possibilities that Kriena had actually advised Maximilian to slice the girl to ribbons and remove the crystals that way. Even with Selvaria fervently agreeing, he had declined.

Kriena's current step was something that he was greatly looking forward to and that was the rectification of the Valkyrur's current impediment: her right arm. So far she had seen that the girl was able to manipulate ragnite around her through the use of her control and possibly from the jewellery but she had managed to somehow deal with the energy shielding that her armors should have put up around themselves and nullify them. Taking that into consideration she had begun the construction of a prosthetic arm for the girl. It was actually more weapon than it was appendage at this stage of things but it would do. Sitting next to the bed sad a gauntlet that had rough ragnite shards embedded where the Valkyrur's arm would connect to the armor and then there was an outer shroud that covered the elbow joint that the girl had half of and then continued up and over her shoulder to end in a pauldron in the shape of a stylized Dragon's spinal ridge. Maximilian had wanted his new toy up to maximum killing ability and had turned down Kriena's initial suggestion of a simple hand. The gauntlet was now a clawed hand with overlapping, edged sections for the fingers and included a small focusing crystal in the palm for long range capabilities. This was augmented with a wide, heavy blade that was stored along the outside of the forearm and could be extended with an internal mechanism that Kriena could not hope to test until the girl could try on the gauntlet. The entire construct was made of the same ragnite conductive alloy as her Black Armor and shared similar ley-lines for ragnite energy to travel through but had a much more aggressive look to them. Whether or not this was even usable by the girl Kriena had no idea and really was relying on the underlying idea that the girl could control the ragnite in the ley-lines and did not actually need anything to help her move the armor. If she did then they were stuck as there was no ragnite engine small enough for this purpose. Sighing Kriena vowed to test it on the girl on the morn but for now she should stop thinking about the Valkyrur for a while.

Now if only she could figure out how to replicate the crystals she could have an unstoppable weapon for her lord and master to finally crush Gallia once and for all and roll onto the real threat on the other side. So intent on her work she failed to notice that her new toy was under intense scrutiny from one Selvaria Bles.

* * *

><p>Selvaria stood as passively as she could manage while she checked over the charts and notes strewn about the restraining table and machines used to keep the other Valkyrur comatose. The readings that the machines were showing were noticeably higher than she remembered seeing not a week ago and that did not seem good. If anything the constant draining of this one's energy was making them grow ever stronger and not weakening them as she would have assumed. It was making her nervous and to such a degree that Maximilian himself had pulled her aside and interrogated her as to her distracted nature as of late. While he was pleased that she seemed even more bloodthirsty in combat, her distracted thoughts while in Ghirlandaio had been noted by more than few of her men and officers. Kriena had no doubt spotted her a few times as she scouted the captive from time to time. Her mind wandered until it clamped down on the glass case she had inadvertently uncovered from beneath a mountain of paper. Within sat a gauntlet and over-armor for a right arm. The complete nature of the forearm combined with only the outer armor for the upper arm and shoulder gave her the insight she needed, it was for <em>her<em>. A prosthetic limb to bring the new _weapon_ up to full strength. Selvaria almost obliterated the artefact before her but abruptly froze both physically and mentally. She had lived through something like this before. Maximilian`s father had kicked off the idea of making a suit of armor that replicated a Valkyrur`s fighting prowess and Selvaria had been the initial test subject for any idea pertaining to this project. That was the reason she was captured in the first place and it brought her endless suffering.

Here Selvaria was torn. The small woman lying here was about to be subjected to something that, more likely than not, scar her mentally and physically for the rest of her life. The marrying of technology and flesh was almost a forbidden science in this time and for good reason: it killed everyone involved. The most anyone would receive in the form of prosthetics was a fake leg or hand made of a solid material. This was ragnite infused technology and seemed designed for complex movement. This was no doubt made from the research notes that were first created with her as the recipient and Selvaria had never screamed like that before or since.

The idea was to create a wearable weapon system that would leach ragnite energy directly from Selvaria`s body and focus it into an extremely potent energy beam. The device was to attach to her back and shoulders to draw power from and then concentrate it along her forearms to fire. The bulky setup had taken months to design and build, all the while testing on how they could draw her energy from her. The process involved piercing her skin with varying probes and the best way to connect, or so the doctor theorized, was through her nervous system. The first time they tried to interface with her she had screamed so harshly she spat blood for an hour. It was only the beginning. It took them six months of trial and error to finally drop the project and it was only because Selvaria had promised to kill herself should Maximilian make her try again that he himself had dropped the idea. Her left shoulder had never worked the same since.

Now here was another. Another her. Another Selvaria lay before her now and she could not choose what to do or how to feel. On the one hand this was her rival for Maximilian`s favour, this was a being that outclassed her in raw power and skill and yet she was about to be subjected to torture on a scale that Selvaria herself could not endure. Conflicted as she was Selvaria felt someone`s gaze upon her and looked back from the glass to see Kriena`s malevolent gaze. The eye contact startled Selvaria and she backed into the case involuntarily as she was brought back to the memories of seeing those same eyes peeking over the top of her surgery table as the young girl delighted at the sight of so much of her father`s toy`s blood. With the thoughts of one Valkyrur`s past clashing with what was to become another Valkyrur`s future, Selvaria glanced at the prone figure with regret and the shadows of pain in her eyes.

"I do not envy you."

The words were lost on the figure but Selvaria had said her piece as she fled from the bloodthirsty gaze of Kriena. Selvaria had been blinded by someone threatening her place with Maximilian but for something such as this Selvaria could not help but feel a twinge of some unpleasant feeling in her chest at the thought of someone going through the same trauma as her for a little reason as a bigger gun to point at your enemies.

It was the following afternoon that the screaming began.

AN:

Well that took a while...To be perfectly honest I got caught by writer's block and it took some time to figure out how to approach this chapter. It is very techno-babel-y but I needed to set the story for the next arch of things to come. that being said: Thank you so very much to everyone who has reviewed, faved, watched or just enjoyed this fic! I will do my level best to see if I can update this with a bit more frequency and I apologize for the slow update. That being said I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

-Arkninja


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Ranma's world consisted mainly of two things: Ice and Pain. The pain was ever present and seemed to only relent when she was conscious enough to pull into the Soul of Ice and away from it of her own free will. So encased in the technique was she that a constant haze of condensed water surrounded her operating table at all times. Kriena loved finding new and interesting things about her patient and marveled at being able to toss boiling water at the girl and watch it turn to snow before it touched her. Ranma had been awoken from her coma when the ragnite contacts in her new prosthetic plunged into the nerves left in her right arm. Ever since then it have been constant tweaking, jabbing and cutting from the psychotic bitch with bloodthirsty eyes. From what she could overhear from the guards, she was being held underground in a Gallian facility designed to create bio-weapons. She couldn't understand what had happened. Last thing she knew was fighting the Empire for control of Fouzen and, if these soldiers were truly Gallian, then she had actually helped one of them and still she was imprisoned. That dark-haired woman…what was her name…? Mary? Marina. That was it. Marina Wulfstan had the same uniform and matching crest. Then the pain returned and she couldn't form complete words anymore and retreated into the Ice.

Within the Ice Ranma had no sense of the amount of time that had passed but there were breaks when she would see someone different. A tall, statuesque woman turned up from time to time when Ranma was awaiting the pain within the Ice. Ranma saw her every so often come and go. She would sometimes touch her arm or face, sometimes simply meet her gaze with a pained expression and then walk away. She never learned her name, never remembered much but a pair of crimson eyes. Those eyes held such compassion sometimes and were so dead others. Ranma latched onto that pair of eyes as the only thing in this place not trying to inflict pain upon her and she held onto their image in her mind. She used them as a center, a focal point to return to within the Ice and soon it was this Ice maiden that she ran to for refuge. Her subconscious built an entire entity within her mind and used the eyes as a base. It told her she needed to get out. She needed to be free and her slowly growing Ki sang for freedom from this bondage. Alas the time was never right. While she could easily shear the bonds that held her she lacked the strength and stamina to break out of the fortress she found herself in. Every so often she would 'ping' with her ki to get a better glimpse of her surroundings and found herself disheartened at what she found. The place was a literal fortress with hundreds upon hundreds of life signatures and near a hundred signatures she had associated with ragnite engines and that meant armor as well.

At present there was nothing to do but sit and wait. She also liked playing with her new 'toy' when she was alone. While still foreign, the gauntlet was proving to be rather interesting and with each tweak, loath as she was to admit it, she gained better control over the unit and all of its hidden surprises.

* * *

><p>Squad 7 was currently marching to meet up with the bulk of the Gallian army in order to begin an all-out assault on the seat of Maximilian's power: Citadel Ghirlandaio. Sitting square in the center of their oddly turtle-like formation sat the Eidlwiess. The troop moved out at half speed this time around as they made their way away from the bloody battle of Marberry Shore. The Eidlwiess had stormed an extremely heavily fortified position with the aid of specialized smoke rounds that had never been fielded before in any conflict. The long-range smoke screen had allowed them to advance to a position well closer than the enemy had ever anticipated and they were able to overwhelm the Imperial force stationed there through a surprise attack. The reason for the half speed was a special cargo that sat within Eidlwiess' belly: one Isara Gunther. The girl was laying on a makeshift pallet consisting of her ever-present shawl and the uniform jackets of Welkin, Rosie and Marina. Her breath came is shallow puffs that barely raised her chest but the real shock had been the ragnite fragments currently imbedded in her chest over her heart. The shards were varying in size and shape but an especially large one penetrated an unknown depth into her body and was slowly pulsing in-time to the slow beat of the girl's heart. There used to be glass shards from the casing that held a unique sample of ragnaid that Isara had acquired from Marina and it had taken the impact of a sniper round from an Imperial ZM SG-96. The large calibre rifle round had shattered the ragnaid but a large burst of energy from the canister blasted outward, vaporizing the bullet and the surrounding clothing, imbedding ragnite into Isara and blowing a crater into the sandy ground she stood on. The concussive force had knocked Rosie silly as she had been crouching beside the girl when she was shot and the offending sniper received an 88mm anti-personal shell for his troubles.<p>

As strange as it was, the squad medic had told them it was better to leave the ragnaid in the poor girl as apparently it was attempting to heal the damage done to her and was actually healing itself out. The flesh was being repaired and the fragments slowly forced out of her body. This phenomenon was extraordinary but it remained to be seen if the largest fragment was actually touching the girl's heart or not. If that was the case then Isara stood very little chance of surviving her miraculous brush with death. As hopeful as both the medic and the rest of Squad 7 was Isara teetered on the brink of life and death as she tried desperately to scoop backwards without toppling off the edge.

* * *

><p>Selveria found herself in a strange situation as she pulled a chair close to the comatose Valkyrur with the crimson hair. The ever present machines whirred beeped and whined but Selvaria paid them no mind as she raked her gaze from toe to hair-tips along the prone woman. She was beautiful, compact and probably the most fearsome fighter this side of the planet as far as she had heard. Selvaria had spent the better part of the past week speaking to the survivors from Fauzen and was struck dumb more than once as the terrified men re-lived the terrors of the tiny woman. Even Kriena's false Valkyrurs had been approached by the silver-haired Witch as some tended to refer to her as and they too were in awe of the power and skill the red-head possessed. Among the troops the Demon Frost was being circulated as the stories continued to travel around the base.<p>

Azure energy was something that all within Fouzen could confirm but those that had faced her in combat told of how she ice and frost had spread wherever the girl had touched. Some soldiers even showed her pieces of armor that had been cracked and split from being flash frozen. More than a few soldiers sported frostbite wounds as well. The crimson color of her hair combined with the impenetrable cold that surrounded the girl in both combat and even now as she lay asleep the air still felt frigid around her had contributed to her near legendary status as the Demon's Frost.

The more she heard, the more she respected and feared this girl. This was the biggest threat to her lord and she had become so enraged that she had bent her sabre out of shape while going through forms one morning and had to hand it in for repair. Seeing her without her signature sabre had led to the inevitable questioning and from there a suitable dressing down for even thinking that she would be dismissed for an untested and un-loyal POW. The more she thought about it the stranger her irrational paranoia became and she began to see the girl in a new light thus bringing her back to the present.

Selvaria now saw the girl for what she did when she first got the gauntlet: a reflection of herself. This led her to use the girl as a sort of sounding board for wayward thoughts that she could tell 'herself' but never voice to anyone else. The conversations were brief, one sided and inexpiably cathartic for the statuesque Valkyrur. As the days slid by Selvaria found herself sneaking down to the lab in order to get a few thoughts out of her head. The presence of Kreina forced her to seek her audiences deep into the night and soon was at the bedside nearly every day for anything from a simple pass to an hour the evening that the Gallian advance was announced. It was a…different experience to be able to speak her mind without the person being an object of worship or intimidated by her Valkyrur status. Even while she was collecting her information from the soldiers were all the same: scared. Throughout her life Selvaria had had no one that she was able to talk to freely and with the strange sense of companionship that Selvaria had for the lithe girl here as they both shared the burden of powers beyond human comprehension as well as the experience of being under Kreina's knife Selvaria revelled in the feeling.

Now it was the Gallian force just under an hour's march away that weighed down Selvaria and slumped her shoulders under the nagging feeling of unease at the sheer number of troops marching on Ghirlandaio. The howitzer artillery pieces that the Empire had dragged from the Keeps at home had begun belching 200 lb shells at the approaching advance and had so far had little success with anti-artillery screens and a Gallian Valkyrur at the head of their advance. The blue aura from her shield had blocked the vast majority of shots and she did not seem winded in the least. As this was a Valkyrur they were facing it was now Selvaria's turn to do what she had been trained to do: destroy the enemies of Maximilian, her Lord and Master. Only this time she had something else to do, someone else to pay a visit to before she faced an enemy in battle that she had lost to before. An enemy that was backed by the entirety of the Gallian front, all of which wanted to destroy her so they could have a clear shot at Maximilian. Selvaria was a prize that Gallia had been after ever since the battle at Barious and she knew just how badly they wanted her dead. She could not allow that.

* * *

><p>It had been a few weeks now and Ranma was starting to notice that the pain was less real and more acting on her part. The blue armored guards were omnipresent and those twin unicorns on their crests were starting to piss her off to no end. The red-eyed woman had been by several times and had actually sat down and talked to what she assumed was her comatose body. Close to a week ago Ranma had begun acting the part of being in excruciating pain when in actuality she had managed to block out almost all of it by retreating to The Ice but once her Ki system accepted her new addition the pain was just a dull ache as Kriena tried to force more energy into the gauntlet system.<p>

The Gauntlet was an amazing piece of technology and Ranma was not as opposed to the device as she had initially assumed she would be. The material conducted Ki at a similar rate to normal flesh and the veins of Ragnite gave her an unparalleled channelling system that would act as focal points for her techniques. The only drawback was physical control. She could not yet form any hand gestures that she tried without fumbling something or slamming her hand shut like a bear trap. That experiment had almost blown her cover and if the plate of medical tools had not been jarred off of the table and masked the movement she probably would have been doped into oblivion. Currently her red-eyed compatriot, Selvaria as she had finally introduced herself as, was sitting at her bedside and worrying over her Lord's safety as all of her Lord's enemies were apparently nearing the front gates. It sounded like it was nearing a time where her escape would be possible and Ranma latched onto that feeling as her saviour Took one last hard look at Ranma and kissed her lightly on the forehead before shouldered a weapon of some sort and walked away.

The kiss was tender and Ranma could taste the self-doubt and sorrow interspersed with a fierce determination to fight in the woman's aura. This was someone that Ranma could respect. From the stories that Selvaria had told her Ranma could identify with most of what the silver haird woman had endured in her life. Selvaria had had an extremely trying childhood and was subjected to torture on a level that even Ranma had trouble coming to terms with. Selvaria was honor bound to another who did not always seem to have her personal safety at the forefront of their agenda, one Maximilian. Serving a master Ranma was very familiar with due her strict sense of honor but to follow someone as blindly as Selvaria did seemed to be a little on the extreme side. Selvaria's personal problems aside, Ranma now had a much better view of how the two countries at war were related. Gallia, the faction that had her currently incarcerated, had twin unicorns on a shield as its crest and was predominantly blue. The Empire, who Ranma assumed was marching on them, had a red crest with a two headed eagle clutching an egg and a sword as its banner. The two factions had begun fighting when the Imperials invaded Gallia in order to push through her to get to their true enemy on the other side of her borders. The only thing they did not count on was the presence of Valkyrurs such as Selvaria and extremely heavy resistance. Some of what Selvaria was saying did not add up thought. The factions seemed to get skewed in some stories and the way that she described a few of her encounters had gears turning in Ranma's head. Soon she would be free of these chains and soon she would seek her vengeance.

* * *

><p>As Selvaria strode out through the gates of Ghirlandaio to lead her troops Gallia started to return artillery fire. The first few shells Selvaria blocked with her deceptively small Valkyrian shield but one slipped past the net and slammed into the ground near the base of the entrance. The resulting shockwave sent ripples of energy down into the labs bellow Ghirlandaio and Kriena, who had been making her way towards her armor to prepare for combat, stumbled and fell against the emergency breaker for her laboratory as a whole. Instantaneously the lab went pitch-black as everything shut down as the fail-safe was designed to do. In that instance Ranma acted and seemed to simply disappear from her restraints as they fell noisily about her cot. Kriena never got a chance to regain her breath before she felt the razor edge of the gauntlet's heavy blade pressed up against her throat as a pair of glowing blue eyes filled her vision.<p>

Ranma was free.

A/N

And I am back at the most awkward time for an update I could possibly think of. First up I apologize for the lateness of this update as it has been a LONG time since I have updated. Writers block has set in as any creative juices I have are all being sucked up by the horrifying sponge that is schoolwork (and Mass Effect 3)...bleh...That being said this chapter answers a lot of questions that people have been wondering about in the reviews and as such I sincerely hope you enjoy!

Thank you again for all that reviewed, faved, read, all of the above really.

Enjoy!

-Arkninja


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